


light travels faster than sound

by secretlyHipster



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bisexuality, Britney Spears - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Character Development, Confident Katsuki Yuuri, Dancing, M/M, Supportive Victor Nikiforov, VictUuri, Womanizer, pansexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23865154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretlyHipster/pseuds/secretlyHipster
Summary: Victor walks in on Yuuri doing something embarrassing.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Kudos: 61





	light travels faster than sound

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place between episodes 4 and 5, after the scene on the beach where Yuri tells Victor about the girl who tried to hug him in the hospital. I can’t help but picture the other interactions that must have gone into helping him open up to Victor, so that’s what this is meant to be.  
> Also: Note Kubo considers them to be in a world where love isn’t defined by gender, so I wrote them both as pansexual and tend to write Victor as hypersexual.

_Teach me how to move like a woman._

Those were his words before Hot Springs on Ice. He remembered how Minako’s dull, tired eyes reflected excitement in an instant. She shifted her weight off the threshold of the door and moved her hand to her chin in thought. He remembered how his own smile felt in that moment, the only warmth in the late night, and how it felt to know he had someone to rely on at such a detrimental time.

 _I have just the thing_.

Her enthusiastic response spilled over into her movements as she fingered through her file cabinet of choreography sheets. The pages rustled noisily until one was thrust into his hands.

_This’ll be tough, but if you can master it, you’re going to have as much “eros” as any woman._

Even after his win in his home rink against Yurio, he still ached to practice Minako’s routine. He knew he was obsessing over it when he found himself in the studio at 4 A.M., moving his hips like he was instead rehearsing for something R-rated. He was sweating through his t-shirt, so it clung to his body while he felt the music move him.

The song was Womanizer by Britney Spears; it turned out Minako was a big fan of the idol after discovering her music while at a dance competition in the states. Yuuri couldn’t argue with the effectiveness of the routine she’d choreographed, either. It was just challenging enough for a professional dancer while also teaching Yuuri what he needed to know about movement.

Very _femme fatale_. Very _eros_.

His shoulders moved into a shimmy; he needed to remind himself to angle his pelvis just right. He didn’t have the higher fat-to-muscle ratio of a woman; no breasts to catch the light in a structured brassiere. He didn’t have soft curves or plump lips to part sensually while his hips wrote erotica novellas. All he had on his side was a truck load of willpower and the perfectionism of a bomb squad.

His body moved into the hardest part of the sequence. It was an impossibly low squat, his hips angled to one side to show off his muscled bum. His buttocks grazed the back of his heels as his knees moved inward toward his chest. His hand trailed down his side, fingers parted, ending on the cheek that was facing the pretend audience. His spine was erect; chin up to signify he was in control.

_This isn’t me. Who am I kidding?_

The thought was unwelcomed, intrusive at best.

The song played on. He was meant to stand and move into something to further accentuate his muscled legs, but instead he flopped onto the smooth floor, eyes closed. His knees fell open like butterfly wings, or maybe they flopped like two dead fish.

He felt like a fraud. He felt like a puppet; his strings were twisted up. Who was controlling him so haphazardly; who wrote such an untimely thought into the script?

The music paused and the void it left behind sucked Yuuri’s attention toward the door. He looked up from his would-be self-pity cave and squinted to make up for his poor eyesight; his glasses were sitting on the floor next to his water bottle. A very blurry Victor was leaning against the threshold, arms crossed, head cocked to the side. He held the remote for the audio system in his pale hand.

“Why’d you stop? It was just getting good.”

Yuuri tried to swallow, sat up with his back to the door if only to hide his face. His self-worth lay on the floor like the chalk outline at a crime scene; he was a corpse to be autopsied, emptied, and left to rot. “How much did you see?”

“Enough to want to see more.” Victor stood over him now, looking down with his eyes but not his posture. That man’s shoulders had probably never slumped forward in his life. He handed Yuuri his glasses, careful with his fingers to avoid smudging the lenses.

“I feel like a child playing dress-up,” Yuuri admitted, taking the offering. He averted his gaze from Victor; he wanted to look at absolutely anything else now that every detail was clear. His face heated, a physical representation of how exposed he felt.

Victor held out his hand to help the younger skater up. It felt like pity, but Yuuri wasn’t going to be rude. He was shocked by the icy temperature of his coach’s skin. Victor didn’t often wear gloves outside, even when it was snowing; said he was used to the cold.

“You didn’t look at all like a child, Yuuri. It was actually a very sexy routine, what little I saw.”

 _Sexy_. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious of his own ears and silently mouthed the word. Yuuri decide to lock that comment away and address how he felt about it at a different point in time. The choose-your-own adventure RPG in his brain selected conversation option B:

“How did you get in here?”

“Minako gave me a key for this very reason.” Victor’s smile was wide, his pronounced cupid’s bow catching the light.

“You guys were fast friends,” Yuuri grumbled, unable to hide his annoyance at his ballet teacher’s scheming. She knew he went there for privacy; why would she give someone else a key? Victor, of all people, who often ended up being someone he needed space from. Each of his safe spaces—the rink, the studio, the bathhouse—were being intruded upon one by one.

He wanted to be furious; he wasn’t.

The realization that he didn’t mind Victor being in his space as much as he would have before their conversation on the beach, before he realized Victor’s hand was outstretched but not overreaching, was an impactful one. A pivotal moment, maybe.

“Why’d you come all the way out here in the snow at four in the morning, though?”

As instantly as the words left his mouth, Victor got too close, a habit Yuuri was trying _really_ hard to become more open to. He often wondered if it was part of Russian culture to frequently disobey the basic rules of personal space. Yuuri’s blush returned with a vengeance and he sank under the gaze of his coach.

“Because you did,” Victor’s breath touched the tip of Yuuri’s nose. White fingertips grazed his jawline; they weren’t so cold anymore. Blue eyes narrowed, brown ones widened. “I woke up early for training this morning and I peeked in your room to see if you wanted to go for a walk on the beach before practice. You weren’t there or at the rink, so you had to be here.”

“Y-you went looking for me?” Yuuri suddenly felt very guilty for avoiding Victor’s constant invitations to hang out outside the rink, even though they’d more or less gotten past that awkward barrier in their relationship after their conversation on the beach. Feeling bad about things that happened in the past was his specialty, after all.

“I’ll always come looking for you; I’m your coach. Plus, you only run off when you’re stressed. That sounds awfully lonely.” Victor pulled his face away. Oxygen returned to the space between them. Yuuri visibly relaxed, then tensed up again when Victor’s hand trailed down his arm and grabbed his wrist. He felt the familiar sensation of being led by a dance partner, and his body instinctively moved into the intended twirl, then landed in the crook of Victor’s elbow. His leg was raised, toes pointed. His 20 years of ballet had forever molded him.

“Your song made me want to dance, too,” Victor shared, voice quaking with a pleased chuckle.

Yuuri immediately stood back up, scooting an entire meter from his coach. The contact probably meant next to nothing to Victor; his love language was very physical. To Yuuri, it was a barrier that was only half-down, even though he’d made the decision to open up more during the skating season and perhaps beyond. His love language was not touch, but affirmation. He wanted Victor to listen to him, support him. He struggled with verbalizing that without sounding clingy, but he settled on the least awkward sentence he could muster.

It was a plus that doing so also changed the subject from himself.

“It’s Minako’s choreography. Do you want to see a video of her performing it at a competition in 2009?” Yuuri preemptively picked up his phone, pulling up the video she’d sent him at their one-on-one session before the face-off.

Victor nodded, clenching his hands at his chest in excitement. They sat next to each other on the benches that lined the back of the studio where helicopter parents would have hovered during their children’s sessions. They watched the video together; Victor’s body moved fluidly back and forth with the beat, his fingers dancing in the air like he was conducting.

When it finished, Victor said, “Very suggestive choreography. Tough for a masculine physique, but you can do it. Did you ask her to teach you this because of our Eros?”

Yuuri’s eyebrows raised at the blunt call-out as well as the reference to the short program as _theirs_. “Yeah, I did. I asked her to teach me to move like a woman.”

“Ah, then that was what I saw on the ice at the face-off,” Victor said, thoughtful fingers playing at his own chin. “That makes a lot of sense.”

Yuuri nodded, his fists clenched on his knees. “You sent Yuurio away over and over, but I was the one who needed to relearn how to move to fit my composition.”

“I sent Yuurio away and let you stay in practice because you realized that; he did not.”

Yuuri’s lips tugged upward into a small smile. It was comforting to hear that Victor had silently recognized one of his strengths, even if that strength was just his ridiculous hyperawareness of his own fallibility.

Victor didn’t let the silence between them last long. “So what’s your favorite Britney song?”

Yuuri tried to hide his surprise simply because he shouldn’t have been. Victor must have been a fan of hers; it was easy to see why. However, his childhood inspiration for skating was sitting next to him, asking casually about his interests. It still felt very unreal, like any moment he would wake up in his dorm in Detroit during finals week, up to his shoulders in course work and binge eating eight thousand calories a day.

“I play Work Bitch a lot when I’m doing cardio. I guess that’s my favorite.”

“Let’s watch the music video. It’ll help to study the way she moves her body,” his ever-dutiful coach said, taking Yuuri’s phone in another blatant act of disrespect toward his personal space. The opening beat playing from his phone’s lousy speaker reminded Yuuri of his two-mile run the previous day.

“I saw her live in Moscow once,” Victor shared. He pursed his lips. “I say _once_ , but it was only four years ago.”

“No way! You must really be a big fan, then,” Yuuri’s gaze left the phone screen and met Victor’s eyes. He was surprised to see they were on him, studying, scrutinizing. He blushed again, suddenly realizing how close they were sitting. Their shoulders brushed; so did their knees. He looked down at the video to avoid meeting those inquisitive eyes, seeking solace. To his horror, Britney’s clothing was scant and her skin was alluringly on display, played up by her sexual movements.

There was no solace to be found in either direction, and the urge to flee electrified his feet.

He felt trapped, pinned down between his coach and the video. In secret, part of him wanted to be pinned down, to pin Victor down. He thought maybe he’d like to be the one doing the pinning, for the tables to turn for once.

He exhaled the thought as quickly as he could.

Yuuri felt like he had no liberty to avoid his sexuality with Victor around. He supposed that’s what a crush was meant to be; an awkward fumble around red faces and lightning-flash connections.

He waited impatiently for the thunder; did Victor feel it too?

“Yuuri, does the video make you feel uncomfortable?” Victor didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Or am I reading this wrong? Do you feel uncomfortable because of me, then?”

Of course his coach noticed the change in mannerisms, the one-eighty degree spin on his heel from chatting casually to squirming in his seat. Yuuri paused the music and met eyes with Victor, intent on making it a power move this time. He needed to be confident, or at least appear so. He said, as firmly as he could, forcing his voice not to crack on delivery, “It’s both, actually.”

If only a tinge, Victor’s eyebrows raised. He wasn’t expecting the truth to be laid down to bluntly before him, then.

Yuuri elaborated, “I feel uncomfortable being so close to you because I don’t typically spend much energy on building physical relationships with people. You probably guessed that much.”

Victor laughed through his nose; he’d picked up on the subtle, dry humor Yuuri was so good at including in his self-deprecation. “What do you need from me, then?”

Yuuri swallowed, though his mouth was dry. He’d never been asked that before, nor had he realized he needed to hear it. He felt his chin raise a little; he suddenly felt like he was given a lot more authority in their dynamic.

No, not given. He took it because he’d been honest and stated his emotions point blank. A lesson for the future, perhaps.

“I just need time,” Yuuri assured him. “It’ll happen with time.”

Neither man moved to break their contact. The “it” was their eventual sexual encounter; both knew it was coming. They were adults, clearly attracted to one another. Their emotional connection was more intense than either could have hoped for. They both had desires, some complex and some not so.

“And the video? It makes you uncomfortable, too, no?”

Yuuri nodded. He struggled with the wording; he didn’t want to sound like a prude. “I feel like I’m intruding when I watch her. Seeing her being objectified feels like a gross crime against women. I feel like some sleazy person who only thinks about sex when I see her perform.”

Victor laughed louder than should be allowed before sunrise. “There’s a difference between being objectified and embracing your own sexual identity. It’s tricky to differentiate, but think of it like this: if I forced you to perform Eros because I wanted to see you do it, versus if I presented Eros to you as an option which you accepted because you, too, like the idea of presenting yourself as someone who demands to be sexually present. That can go for anything, including the dance you were just practicing.”

A mischievous smile played at Victor’s lips; there was more to be said about his opinion on Yuuri’s Womanizer routine. Maybe he’d ask after the season was over once they had time to grow closer.

Or he wouldn’t have to ask.

“I’d like to see you perform it, but I respect you enough to let that remain as something for the future, not today. I know you’re not ready to show me that side of yourself yet.”

It was a blatantly flirtatious line, purred out very intentionally, and not the first one since Victor joined him in Hasetsu. Yuuri looked up at the older man who was once again studying his reaction; careful, like washing your grandmother’s favorite casserole dish. The soap made it too slippery to properly hold.

Yuuri was sick of the feeling of broken glass beneath his feet. He had a taste of power and he wanted to binge it. Was he ready for the thunder? His mouth moved before he realized what words would come out; light travels faster than sound. “You’re flirting with me.”

“Yes.”

It was one thing to realize it subconsciously, another to have the declaration reverberate on his eardrums.

The heat traveled to his face, lightning quick. His heartbeat felt hollow and fast. His hands started to tremble. His foot unconsciously tapped against the floor at a semi-automatic rate. He recognized the edge of a panic attack from competitions; he couldn’t let it happen now. He took a deep breath in and released it through his nose.

“We don’t have to talk about it right now,” Victor said, sensing the discomfort in the room. “The season is more prevalent; there isn’t a time constraint with our personal relationship.”

Yuuri’s cerebral storm calmed at the idea of being able to delay the conversation just a bit longer. Victor always met him halfway; he knew he should attempt to do the same. It wasn’t like the feelings behind the flirtation weren’t reciprocated. It was an inevitable conversation, lips fated to meet. He smiled to indicate he wasn’t at all against the idea of _having_ a personal relationship. “I want to talk about it after the regional championship.”

It felt good to say what he needed from someone else, to know it would be received with love and care like snail mail on Christmas.

Victor nodded, then his mood shifted out of the serious topic. “You said Britney makes you think about sex like _some sleazy person_ —”

“Those weren’t my exact words.”

“—so continuing with the same theme, I have a question: what’s the boldest thing you’ve ever done because you were aroused?”

Yuuri couldn’t help but snort, though he knew he should have been mortified. Only Victor could so smoothly, so confidently flub a transition into a lighter conversation. “Why do you ask?”

“I ask everyone I want to get to know better,” the Russian replied. “People become their true selves when they covet something.”

“I think we think of arousal differently,” Yuuri admitted. He hadn’t talked to anyone much about his sexual desires, but he did share his crushes through college with Phichit. He tried to think of that like a building block, lifting him up to the next step: his next major connection with someone, with Victor.

“We absolutely do. Everyone does,” Victor agreed. “I still want you to tell me.”

“It isn’t as scandalous as you’re imagining,” Yuuri assured him. He answered anyway. “I kissed Yuko once, when we were teenagers, even though I knew she had feelings for someone else. She started dating Nishigori the following week. Tell me yours?”

“I lost my virginity to a rink mate’s spouse my senior year in high school,” Victor said. Was it in Yuuri’s head or did the older man move a little closer to him while he spoke? “She was older. He found out and stopped showing up to train with Yakov. She divorced him and he left the sport, but I never spoke to either again. That’s probably about as scandalous as heterosexual intercourse gets, huh?”

Yuuri laughed through his nose. “What did Yakov say?”

“You’ll learn that with him, the less he says, the angrier he is. He didn’t speak to me much for the rest of the season. I almost thought he was going to drop me as his student. He calls me irresponsible because of it to this day,” Victor said, his voice a kaleidoscope of fondness, regret and his usual cheerful disposition.

For the first time, Yuuri felt like there was some common ground between them, perhaps a foothold on what he once thought of as a far-too-steep rock wall. Even Victor had made mistakes during his skating career, even if it wasn’t in competition. A feeling of relief and acceptance demanded his attention; he felt his hand raise on its own, rest on Victor’s knee. It was a silent statement of understanding, shared between the two of them and no one else.

Victor quietly placed his hand over Yuuri’s. He ventured to rub his thumb along the younger’s knuckles; it was bold but not unwarranted, not unsolicited. Yuuri allowed himself to feel the positivity of human connection. It was warm, much warmer than his only other prominent connection: the ice.

“I’m not ready to dance Womanizer for you, but I’ll teach you the routine, if you want,” Yuuri offered, his voice less timid than he would have expected from himself. “We can work on it together.”

“That sounds like a fair compromise,” Victor agreed. He removed his hand from Yuuri’s and held it out expectantly. “Can I see the choreography sheet?”

Yuuri gave it to him, almost eagerly, a smile on his face. He pushed up his glasses. The offer was double-sided; a dominant part of him wanted to see Victor perform the dance, too.

Perhaps he had a new answer to Victor’s question.

**Author's Note:**

> You know Work Bitch is on your cardio playlist, too. Don’t you try lying. Also, I spent almost a whole week on this barely 3500 word short story because it was finals week and I needed an outlet. I hope you guys liked it and thanks for your time.


End file.
